Reading Between the Lines
Security was tight at the overseers' Sunday morning meeting at the Part Avenue Plaza Hotel in New York--the meeting at which the Rudenstine pick was confirmed. No one was even allowed into the elevators without permission of a security guard armed with a list of all participants in the meeting. Rudenstine, who reportedly did not attend the meeting, was not on the list. But the future president's name was highly conspicuous by its absence. Just below Rosovsky's name on the carefully double-spaced list was a one-line gap--precisely where "Rudenstine" would have appeared in alphabetical order. Suspicious. Very suspicious.
Plugging Leaks
Early on, the Harvard brass had realized it needed to plug the leaks in the presidential search process. The task fell to Secretary to the Corporation Robert Shenton and University Attorney Michael W. Roberts. It was a thankless task for both men. A scene observed by reporters at the Waldorf seemed to characterize the effort. As Harvard's governing boards dined with Rudenstine inside the hotel's Louis XVI room, Roberts sat alone in the anteroom reading that day's New York Times. Inside the paper was an article reporting that Rudenstine was the search committee's choice, a fact which Roberts and Shenton had worked hard to keep from the press.
Big Mouth
Asked about attendance at Rudenstine's confirmation, one overseer responded, "There was a quorum." Turning to a fellow governing board member, he asked, "Did I say too much?"
"I didn't know The Crimson stayed at the Waldorf."
--Acting Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, encountering a reporter outside an elevator in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City.
"The Crimson has been extraordinarily enterprising. Only Harvard could have a student newspaper that would be so persistent, clever, annoying and ultimately successful."
--Visibly moved search committee member Judith Richards Hope, physically embracing a Crimson reporter after Rudenstine's final confirmation.
Junior?
After Rudenstine's confirmation, Slichter commented to one reporter on the fact that The Crimson had incorrectly identified him in several articles as "Charles P. Slichter Jr. '45." "Charles P. Slichter Junior? I'm not a 'junior,'" Slichter said, chortling, to a Crimson reporter. "My father was Sumner Slichter."
Irregular Weekly
Slichter, the search committee chair, did receive at least one phone call from the Harvard Independent. Slichter reportedly admitted that he had never heard of the publication and promptly declined to comment.
"The supposedly hush-hush Harvard search committee leaked like the Titanic, like the Weld administration even. But it seems even those enterprising young journalists at The Crimson (who were given full credit for their scoop on the Rudenstine story by The New York Times, but not The Boston Globe) missed at least one potential candidate on the presidential short list."--The Cambridge Chronicle on March 28, referring to former Mayor Alfred E. Velucci who said, "I thought I was going to get the job. They passed me by."
"In spite of my recent behavior, I'm not instinctively an elusive person"--Neil Rudenstine